[mythtv-users] Recording IPTV?

[Stephen Worthington]

On Thu, 20 Feb 2020 21:49:30 +0000, you wrote:

>On Thu, 20 Feb 2020 at 21:24, Peter Carlsson <maillist.peter at home.se> wrote:
>
>> I did a first attempt with some free Play services that does not require
>> any credentials but it did not work and it looks like this:
>>
>> #EXTM3U
>>
>> #EXTINF:0,4004 - SVT1 HD
>> #EXTMYTHTV:xmltvid=svt1.svt.se
>> #EXTVLCOPT:program=1234
>> https://www.svtplay.se/kanaler/svt1?start=auto
>>
>> #EXTINF:0,4096 - SVT2 HD
>> #EXTMYTHTV:xmltvid=svt2.svt.se
>> #EXTVLCOPT:program=1235
>> https://www.svtplay.se/kanaler/svt2?start=auto
>>
>> Compared to your example I don't really know what to fill in for the
>> different fields. The URLs are copied exactly as they look at the Play
>> service page but do I also have to enter some additional parameters like
>> you have (src, freq, msys, etc.) and with what?
>>
>
>The URLs you're using above are for website access via a browser.  You need
>streaming URLs here.

Yes, you need a URL that you can put into VLC and have it play, rather
than a URL that a browser can play.  Also, I believe that MythTV can
not handle URLs that get redirected, where VLC may be able to do that.
What you need is the URL after all the redirections are done.  There
are often redirections done so that the actual URL goes to a content
delivery network such as Akamai, and the final URL will be to the
local server for the CDN, so it will change depending on your IP
address.

Finding the URLs can be a real problem - especially when they use
HTTPS, as the encryption stops you from just using Wireshark to look
at the IP packets used to open the connection.  With HTTPS, Wireshark
will show you the IP address (and domain name) of the site you get
connected to, but is unable to tell you the rest of the URL you need.

The URLs you need will not need any of the parameters mine have like
freq, msys and so on - those are specific to SAT>IP URLs and tell the
SAT>IP tuner what to tune to.  Your URLs will be normal Internet URLs.

>I notice the streamlink project [https://streamlink.github.io/] has a
>plugin for SVT.  If you can install that and then by using either of the
>URLs you're using above, to get a video stream played, then you could look
>at using streamlink in conjunction with MythTV's external recorder
>functionality [https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/ExternalRecorder].  That seems
>like a reasonable way forward to me.

I tried running streamlink with full debug output, but unfortunately
it does not display the URLs even when set to trace level output.  As
it is all written in Python 3 it may be able to be made to display the
URLs, but you would need to be able to modify it to do that.

I can not use your https://www.svtplay.se URLs to test with from here
in New Zealand - it looks like they are geolocked to only be
accessible from your part of the world.  I just get a 404 error.

Getting www.svtplay.se to work is not your ultimate aim here though.
You primarily want your Telia channels, and the URLs for them may not
be so hard to get if you can just ask their tech support for them.
After all, you are paying them to use their service, so they may be
fine with just telling you the URLs.  Then you would have to add your
username/password authentication to the URLs and hopefully they would
work.  Test them in VLC first, then try MythTV.